On September 9th and 10th FringeArts and Drexel University’s Westphal College will present Levée des conflits, a dance in the round from world-renowned choreographer and dancer Boris Charmatz, as part of the 2016 Fringe Festival. Beginning September 7th, Westphal is hosting a series of lectures and workshops—professional and community—around the performances as part of a series dubbed Boris Charmatz: Dancing Dialogues,capped off with an informal performance from the professional workshop of 24 local dance artists. In anticipation, Dancing Dialogues has been profiling each participant and we’ll sharing their reflections on their craft here. (Pt.1, Pt. 2, and Pt. 3)

Rhonda Moore

“I was in a dance school literally for a while where they would just throw all of the leftover people to me. And I was supposed to figure out what to do with these people. And my greatest works have been those people that everyone sort of like dismissed, you know, because I am kind of the person for the underdog. I think that people haven’t ever been spoken to in a certain way or really believe that they can really get through their extremes too. Everyone is not going to be a dancer, clearly. But everyone has a story and if you’re a good teacher you find a way to get that person to get to the deepest level of really expressing what they have to say.”

Christina Zani

“I feel like I’ve rubbed up against so many different cultures and communities as a performing artist, and as a dancer especially, and a person that lives in the body and does things with other people’s bodies, that is just considered strange and taboo in our culture. And all of that feels very subversive and human to me in ways that other professions, and other art forms as well, don’t get into that place.”

Je Kim

“Q: What does it feel like to be in your own work? A: Home.

In other people’s work, it’s like being in somebody’s house, but I’m just their guest. But I’m mostly me, myself. But not like going to somebody’s house that I don’t know. It’s like going and visiting parents’ house, visiting best friend’s house, visiting girlfriend’s house, you know, just hang out and watch TV.”

Erin Elizabeth Carney

“I consider myself to be a writer so usually I’ll journal and I’ll write a lot about certain ideas that I have circulating around that topic. Then usually I’ll try to find a story of a sort, or at least a theme that I’m trying to attack. For the past show that I made, I had so many different images and so many things that I wanted to say. But it didn’t make sense in my mind unless I made a map of it. So I drew a physical map, which then became like the actual odyssey. Like, there needs to be a river that they need to go over, and there will be a mountain. And each of those things eventually became more thematic things. But I drew so many floor plans of places that didn’t exist.”